Madonna Flies Commercial! (But at Least Not in Economy)

Celebrities ... they're just like you and me. Except they're not. It's not news when we fly commercially, but when Madonna steps on a plane and she's surrounded by strangers instead of her entourage, people talk and gossip-tainment blogs light up. We at TPG aren't that surprised — after all Brian himself has flown on the same flight as Madge on British Airways to London (LHR), although the accommodations were much nicer during that flight.

Several media outlets are claiming she flew economy on the flight from London (LON) to Lisbon (LIS), but in fact this is a business class seat — at least a European, short-haul business class, which is often not a separate cabin but simply the same seats as coach, with the middle one blocked.

The shape of the windows makes it evident that this is an Airbus A320 series jet — an A319, A320 or A321 — which is flown by both TAP Air Portugal and British Airways on London to Lisbon routes. Madonna is clearly sitting in a bulkhead seat, and there are no bulkheads in economy on either TAP or BA, so we are pretty sure Madonna was in seat 1F. That's business class on either airline. From the sticker on the door in front of her, we can also surmise it was TAP: the letters "rir" and "en" can only be "Abrir / Open," and abrir is Portuguese for open. A quick check of what the interior of Airbus single-aisle jets on TAP looks like confirms our hunch: the red contours on the headrests do not match BA short-haul cabins, but they do match TAP.

So at least we know that the Material Girl is not going coach class.

Regardless, it would definitely be weird to be sharing a plane with a superstar who has a reported net worth of $800 million. Travel + Leisure reported in September that Madonna bought a $9 million house in Lisbon and planned to make the city her official residence. But maybe next time she travels to Portugal she'll do so in a private jet.